In 1875, Deputy Surveyor Charles L. DuBois of the Government Land Office set the Initial Point of the Uintah Special Meridian to subdivide the Uintah Reservation into townships and sections. The meridian line was to run north and south and a base line east and west from a stone mound placed in the present-day Hayden area.
The Establishment of the Uintah Reservation
The Uintah Valley Reservation was set aside in 1861 by Abraham Lincoln. In 1864, it was formally legislated by Congress, and a treaty was signed in 1865 by a group of tribal leaders within the Utah Territory, agreeing to move to the reservation. That treaty, however, was never ratified by Congress.
Other Colorado Utes joined Utah's Uintah Utes in the Basin. The White River Utes were removed to the Uintah Reservation in 1881 after the 1879 Meeker uprising. The Ouray Reservation (which remains outside the Uintah Meridian survey boundaries) was established south of the Uintah reserve for the Uncompahgre Utes, following their forced removal in 1882. The Bureau of Indian Affairs merged the Ouray and Uintah Agencies in 1886, forming the Uintah and Ouray Agency.
Allotments and Homesteading
The 1887 Dawes Act encouraged the allotment of U.S. reservation lands to individual tribal members in plots of 20-160 acres, with unallotted land opened to homesteading. The Indian Appropriations Act of 1902 applied the act to the Uintah Reservation, and tribal land was allotted to Uintah and White River band members in 1905. Any undistributed land, minus trustlands for grazing, was opened to homesteading that same year for $1.25 per acre by Theodore Roosevelt's presidential proclamation. Uncompahgre land was allotted earlier in 1898, spurred by mining interests in the area.
The importance of the Uintah Special Meridian, aside from being distinct from the Salt Lake Meridian survey that subdivides the rest of Utah, came as the Uinta Basin's tribal allotments, homesteads and townsites were divided using the grid from the 1875 Uintah Meridian survey. That significance endures today, as part of the Public Land Survey System, determining boundaries in parts of Duchesne, Uintah and Wasatch counties.